Monday, 21 October 2013

These weeks are rolling by so quickly, I don't know where the time goes and I can't believe we're into the third week of October already! I saw someone tweet today that it's 65 days till Christmas which makes me super excited. This past week I have definitely got my Christmas thinking cap on and have been planning lots of Christmassy goodness....my John Lewis basket online is overflowing!! Also this week I made a Christmas cake so it will have 8-9 weeks to "age". Of course I made the cake with spiced rum rather than brandy as why wouldn't you use rum?!! Also the arrival of my Selfridges Advent Calender has got me counting down the days till December 1st!

October OOTD weekly roundup. Now you may notice that days 19&20 are missing. Day 19 I wore basically the exact same work outfit as day 18 so didn't want to double post then day 20 I forgot to take a photo...sorry!

Monday, 14 October 2013

I think after the week we've just had it's safe to say it is well and truly Autumn! I have to say I haven't been much of a fan of the rain and cold nights but it really is a lovely time of year.

As you know, I love Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes - probably my most favourite thing about the season - so I decided to use this as inspiration to bake a Pumpkin Spice Loaf Cake. I bought a small pumpkin and made pumpkin purée from scratch which was a bit of an effort but oh so worth it! The cake tasted amazing - full of spices and fruit and deliciously moist pumpkin. I'll include the recipe at the end of this post.

So, my October Challenges week 2 update. As you can probably tell from the baking, the no sugar rule has gone out the window. I'm not sure why I ever thought I could do zero sugar, it is impossible! I have however stopped having any sugar in my tea and coffee and have stayed away from biscuits. Cake however is another story! I have been walking a lot each day - averaging about 6 miles per day which isn't quite at my 7 mile mark but I figured I either have dance classes, rehearsals or work most days where I'm dancing around so it makes up for not quite reaching 7 miles.

Now OOTD weekly round up:

Day 7 - 07/10/2013

Red Cable Knit Jumper - Republic (I found this in my brothers wardrobe so I have no idea when he bought it so it may or may not be available!).

Monday, 7 October 2013

It was my little brother's 20th birthday on the 1st so I decided to put this cute photo of us in!

So week 1 of my October challenges....let's just say I've been a bit of a failure! I did really well on the first two days with no sugar and walking 7 miles, then it was our final performance of the summer season shows I've been doing since April so we had a party and yes I are copious amounts of sugar - whoops! From then until now I've been feeling super poorly! I think I'm just exhausted and run down so I've been feeling very sorry for myself. Also I think cutting out sugar completely may have contributed a bit so I've decided to adapt this challenge. I'm just going to limit myself to having one sugary drink or good each day - that should help me cure my sugar addiction but also not make me feel horrendous.

Now here's the weekly round-up of my outfit of the day posts. I have kept this up even though especially over the weekend I was feeling and looking awful!